


Shatter

by WasJustAReader



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Character Study, F/M, Gen, Heartbreak, Resilience, mentioned canon character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-17
Updated: 2018-04-17
Packaged: 2019-04-24 01:22:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14345010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WasJustAReader/pseuds/WasJustAReader
Summary: Leia Organa and heartbreak are no strangers. To break is one thing. To shatter, another.





	Shatter

Leia Organa’s heart had shattered three times.

First when she was 19, only a wisp of the woman she would become, but already so full; full of anger and conviction and determination that good would prevail in the end. At 19 her heart shattered in to a million pieces and millions of screams tore through her chest. It was only later –years later – that she would understand that those screams hadn’t all belonged to her. At 19 her heart became space dust, an asteroid field, a void where home once was.

Decades pass and she’s more than old enough to be that wisp of a woman’s mother. She’s far older than her own mother had been as she took her last breaths. And Han is older still than that, but will grow no older. When he falls, Leia’s knees buckle with him. Her heart lurches and then it drops. Down, down, down. She feels it fall – beyond her ribs, her hips. It falls down, down, and out of her body entirely. It’s no longer entirely hers, and when it reaches terminal velocity – when he does – it shatters again. Pushed to breaking by its own blood.

The third time is softer. A sort of muffled splintering. This destruction was a long time in the making and she’d been expecting it. She doesn’t welcome it with open arms, she had prayed it would never arrive, but still there is grim acceptance. “My son is gone.” And from a certain point of view – a perspective now hers out of necessity – this is true. A light has gone out. There is a darkness in her breast now, an inky tendril pooling behind her navel where once there was light, life. And her heart is once again in pieces, jagged edges lodging in her soul and causing not searing agony but a low, thrumming, indefatigable ache.

There were other breaks in between, other bruises, built up scar tissue, and glued together cracks. If there really was such a thing as a fair share of heartbreak, she would venture to say that she’d had more than hers. But she had also put her heart back together; often with help, also without. She and heartbreak were no strangers, she’d ridden in to this world on its back, and it had followed at her heels for the rest of her life. No, heartbreak would not break her. It had not.

But Leia Organa’s heart had shattered three times. And that just might.


End file.
